Governments have a financial interest in smoking cessation, since much of the expense of smoking-related health problems fall on them. One way governments discourage smoking, and also recoup health-related expenses, is through a cigarette tax. New York State is especially aggressive in this regard, having a cigarette tax of $4.35 per pack of twenty.

As a recent study has shown, there's more direct evidence that a meteor impact caused of the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction than an enrichment of iridium or the outline of the Chicxulub impact crater.[4-7] Meteor impact generated a tsunami-likewave in an inland sea of what's now North America, and this tsunami killed numerous species whose remains were quickly buried by sediment and subsequently fossilized in a high state of preservation.[5]

The fossil site, called Tanis, is a 1-1/2 meter thickness layer that's located in North Dakota'sHell Creek Formation.[5-6] In this layer. fossilized fish are stacked one atop another along with fossilized vegetation, insects, mammals, dinosaurs, ammonites, and other animals. It's a huge collection of different species of different stages of life that died at the same time, on the same day.[5] The fossil preservation is superb because of the quick formation of the sediment layer.[6]

The conjectured mechanism for such fossilization was a violent shaking that created a 30 foot wave on the inland sea in what is now North Dakota, and this wave deposited fish onto a sand bar at the mouth of a river.[5] The wave then reversed direction and left the fish stranded, at which time the fish were pelted with tektites, glassbeads up to 5 millimeter in diameter, that condensed from moltenmaterial ejected by the meteor impact into the atmosphere.[5] This torrent of ejecta lasted for 10-20 minutes, and then a second large wave covered the fish with sediment, where they fossilized.[5] Says paleontologist, Robert DePalma, an author of the paper and discoverer this fossil deposit,

"A tsunami would have taken at least 17 or more hours to reach the site from the crater, but seismic waves - and a subsequent surge - would have reached it in tens of minutes."[6]

While the Chicxulub impact did create tsunamis, the wave in the inland sea was not a tsunami, but a seiche, a standing wave caused by an earthquake.[5] A tsunami would have taken 10-12 hours to travel the 3,000 kilometers from the impact site, while the exposure of the fish by a seiche would have occurred at the same time as the rain of tektites.[5] Such seiches have been observed in recent times. The 2011, 9.0 magnitude, Tohoku earthquake in Japan created a six-foot-high seiche half an hour later in a Norwegianfjord 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles) away.[5-6]

The tektites would have impacted at speeds of 100-200 miles per hour, and it's suspected that the rain of tektites and other debris would have ignited wildfires over the Americas; and, perhaps, around the world.[5] Tektites were discovered, also, in the gills of fossil Acipenseriforma (sturgeons and paddlefish) that swam through the water with their mouths open as they were feeding.[5-6] The fossil bed also produced evidence of some undiscovered species of fish. Says DePalma "“At least several appear to be new species, and the others are the best examples known of their kind... Before now, fewer than four were known from the Hell Creek, so the site was already magnificently significant."[6]